A Moment for Paris
by Suffering Soldier
Summary: Behind one of the doors, perhaps Elizabeth made it to Paris after all.


Elizabeth was cold.

Or perhaps it was numbness she felt. She could no longer differentiate between the two.

But she was tired. Of that she was certain.

Every moment that she lie there with the cold metal floor at her back the stronger the creeping blackness drew at her eyelids, and the frigid silence now seemed so welcoming.

If she could only rest her eyes for a moment…

A dark red drop of blood rolled across her brow, drawing a painful shudder as it chilled her skin.

Tiny, clammy fingers raked her forehead, brushing aside bloodied strands of hair. Elizabeth managed to give a faint smile to the Little Sister that knelt at her side. Sally would escape Rapture, of that much the young woman was certain. Behind one door, she knew, was the man who would take them away from this wretched place. Who'd take them to the lives they deserved.

Despite herself, Elizabeth felt tears welling. She'd have been lying if she said a small part of her wasn't terrified.

But she chose to ignore that part.

Instead she chose to think about Paris.

But she'd never been there—not really, anyway. In the end she'd only seen two cities: the one in the sky that had been her cage and the one beneath the sea that would be her tomb. Elizabeth chuckled. It was all too tragically poetic to do anything else.

Yet all the same, she missed Paris. She missed the airy songs of the street musicians she had never listened to. She missed the light of a sunset she'd never watched glistening on the Seine, and she tried failingly to recall the texture of a rose stem she had never rolled between the tips of her fingers.

In a strange way, she missed her tower and Songbird too.

She knew of course that she'd never allow herself to be taken back having tasted the air of the free world, but she longed for the familiar in the way only a woman who lie dying in a strange place could.

But most of all, she missed Booker.

Not the lie she had watched die on the end of a Big Daddy's drill, or the specter of her mind that had followed her around Rapture, but her father. The man who had fought half of Columbia to reach her. Who had smiled despite himself when he found her dancing on the pier at Battleship Bay. The man she had drowned for the sake of a life she wasn't sure she had ever wanted.

She had seen behind all the doors. She knew there were worlds where Booker was with Anna. She knew too that there were worlds where he had never lost his wife, either. But there was no door where she and Booker were together at the end of it all. No door where he invited her to dance as the sun set over City of Light, painting the stone plaza with their long shadows.

And so for a selfish moment, she imagined one.

She imagined Booker, his pinstriped slacks neatly pressed and his hair combed, offering her one of his gentle hands. He looked younger—freed from the deep lines a hard life had etched into his expression and a small, sincere smile drawn across his lips.

She imagined smiling too as her hands fit perfectly within the folds of his warm grasp. For the first time in as long as Elizabeth could remember, the smile that pulled at the edges of her cheeks wasn't forced or tinged with sadness, but genuine and unreserved as she danced with him. Her rich brown hair was pulled back into a girlish pony tail and her simple white blouse and blue neckerchief were ruffled by a warm breeze as they spun slowly around the empty stone plaza.

Booker made a misstep and caught the toe of her shoe, mumbling an apology and offering a sheepish grin. She continued to beam at him, all too happy to take lead as they slowly waltzed to the sound of distant music.

For as long as the soft tune hung in the air, her form was lost against his, leaving a single inky silhouette swaying in the waning light, gone the hard-eyed Pinkerton and reluctant femme fatale.

After a time the music faded and the detective offered his arm to his daughter, leading her on a stroll of the serene riverfront as the city around them began to settle itself for the impending night.

Along the viaduct they paused to watch the blue-coated thrushes that swept between the river and the branches of linden trees that leaned at the water's edge, chattering and fluttering about as they went. She glanced at Booker, his youthful face cast in amber by the sunset as he leaned against the white stone railing, and she suddenly felt her heart flutter. It seemed to her that the pleasant fantasy might soon fade away as they all did, leaving her alone once more as her life ebbed away.

So she waited for it. She waited for the warm light of Paris to blur into the murky form of Rapture with its cold shadows and stench of stagnant water. She waited for the warm feeling of contentment to die away and leave nothing but the hollow void that the pain and loneliness had carved out long ago.

Yet the creeping chill she waited for didn't come, and there was only the soft light of the sun on the Seine and the heat of Booker's body that bled into her through his sleeves as she leaned against him.

Noticing the air of remoteness about her, Booker called to her softly, smiling anew when she looked to him. Brushing a dangling strand of hair behind her ear, her father laid an affectionate kiss on her forehead. Elizabeth laced her arm through his, a smile curling her pale pink lips as Booker slowly led onward into Paris' twilight.

She wasn't sure what this was—whether it was some lucid dream as the last part of her mind died away or something more, she no longer knew.

And perhaps it didn't matter.


End file.
